Turning down an MBE, the story of an Indian-Origin Author

The British Empire to many countries is often associated with “a brutal, bloody thing that resulted in so much death and destruction” as quoted by Nikesh Shukla, an author of Indian origin who recently turned down an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday’s Honour List.

MBE stands for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, an MBE is the third highest-ranking Order of the British Empire award behind CBE and OBE. It is awarded for reasons related to outstanding achievement or service to the community which has had a long term, significant impact.

Nikesh Shukla is an author whose works mainly focus on racism, identity and immigration in Britain. He was born and brought up in Britain, his father had immigrated to Britain from East Africa, the place where his ancestors had gone from Gujarat.

Shukla through his writings, speeches and social media had drawn attention to a scheme called “Operation Legacy”, which was an attempt by the British Government to identify and destroy colonial files that could prove to be embarrassing for future British Governments.

“I think a lot about Operation Legacy, a Foreign Office programme to destroy files that might throw light on the horrors of the empire. If Britain’s colonial history was something to be proud of, as 44 per cent of people in a YouGov poll said in 2016, then why did special branch officers feel the need to rid the world of documents that might give an insight into how racist the British empire was, how brutal?” states Nikesh Shukla.

He also added, “Were these people proud of the Bengal famine, the Amritsar massacre, partition, slavery, the forced castration of Mau Mau rebels? Or did they just like that Britain gave its colonies railways?”

Nikesh Shukla turning down the MBE received a lot of mixed opinions from people. He received thousands of “likes” for turning down the MBE but at the same time, people didn’t stop themselves from having to critique him.

An official representing white society is presumably to have said “Sometimes it is a form of gaslighting- we offered to honour and recognise you and you turned down our honour and recognition so don’t complain next time we treat you in a way that doesn’t honour or recognise you”

Nikesh Shukla turning down the MBE was because of the deep grudge he held for the history of Britain’s colonisation of countries due to racism. He could not bring himself to be part of an empire that dealt with discrimination, it would go against his ideals but at the same time, an MBE would have brought more recognition to his causes. Now Mr Nikesh Shukla will have to wait and see if this decision would prove to be the right one or the wrong.

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